


AL1VE

by xxRobinxx



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alcoholism, Elijah is a G, Elijah is a good friend just a bit of an asshole person, Grief, Hank is his own warning frankly, Hurt/Comfort, Markus - Freeform, Minor Character Death, Mourning, PTSD, Robo Jesus, Traumatised character, and it’s not graphic just implied, android oc - Freeform, badass OC, but that’s only in later chapters, canon somewhat not cool with it, connor is confused, escaped from an evil science lab now we here, im not even sorry I love my baby, tw implied assault, tw implied sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:15:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26044078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxRobinxx/pseuds/xxRobinxx
Summary: After escaping GH0ST and forging a new life in the city of Detroit nearly forty years onwards, Lexis - or EX1S - finds herself caught up in the centre of an uprising that will change the world forever. When her past still haunts her and her fragile identity is split in two, who can she trust? Which side should she pick?
Kudos: 1





	AL1VE

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired by the dichotomy of Detroit: Become Human and wanted to explore that with a character who is truly caught between two worlds. Identifying as a machine strips her of the humanity she feels, but identifying as human means that the things which happened to her at the facility where she was created have much darker implications. When you’re created to be a literal killing machine but you feel emotions, shit gets complicated. 
> 
> Anyways I hope you enjoy! I wrote it on Wattpad so I just grabbed the short chapters I wrote and made one Long chapter here.

The house was a single large room, a hall, and two other rooms the other side of it.  
The walls were painted a fading red that was chipped around the door frames where someone had opened them too vigorously and the doorknobs had struck the paintwork. The wooden floors had a thin layer of worn polish on them. Picture frames full of wide smiles and laughter adorned the walls. Embers glowed a soft, steady red in a fireplace - a real one, not virtual, which was rare these days.  
Perhaps it would have been cozy under different circumstances.  
White light struck the room like a bolt of lightning. It sent the shadows scurrying behind furniture like a hoard of gutter rats, but only for a moment. As it faded they crept back in to resume their feast upon the figure that lay, slumped, across the sofa. Another white flash revealed his bulging eyes. Another, the purple-blue tongue that peeked from between his thin lips. A third and final flash was the brutish bruises that marred his throat. 

"I'm gonna go ahead and say it's strangling." 

Detective Keller straightened up and tugged his gloves off finger-by-finger. The photographer sent by forensics climbed off of their knees and strolled across the room. Glass from the shattered sliding door crunched beneath Keller's boots as he paced around the back of the sofa and observed the splatter of a dark substance - they assumed blood -seeping into the wood.

"What do you think?" 

The photographer bent over and snapped a photograph.  
Flash.  
A slight movement in Keller's periphery as the woman, who had been stiller and more silent than a mannequin before then, unfolded her arms. 

"I think you're right. But that blood isn't his." 

"No," Keller scratched his chin, "the vic didn't get cut." 

"Just strangled. Lucky him." The figure stepped out of the darkness and into what little light was provided. A smaller flash, outside this time as the photographer traced muddy boot prints on the patio, threw her angular face momentarily into such sharp relief that the contour of her cheekbone appeared as a score in her dark, smooth skin. 

"Hey, you know the vic's name? I didn't catch it off Sanchez." Keller asked as his partner crouched down behind the sofa and drew an evidence marker from her pocket. The small tubular light threw off a faint glow beneath her chin as she moved to place it next to the pool of blood on the floor. 

Once her hand was about an inch away from its intended destination, it stilled along with the rest of her. Perhaps she's noticed something, Keller thought, and shoved his cold hands into his pockets.  
When she didn't move for another half minute, Keller cocked his head and bent slightly at the knees as he peered down at his partner. Her lips were slightly parted and her eyes set wide and round. 

"Lexis? You okay?" 

As if on command, an acrid scent broke through the sickly-sweet stench of death that hums in the back of your nose and leaps to the front whenever the wind blows a certain way. An acrid scent like gasoline with a strong undertone of copper. Lexis slowly lowered her hand, illuminating the dark puddle by the toe of her boot in a pool of flickering light.  
The blood was blue. 

"Holy shit." Keller breathed it out and immediately cursed himself for speaking as the odour of the victim's corpse burrowed into the back of his throat. Lexis was suddenly on her feet - somehow he didn't remember her standing up - and beside the body. The latex gloves on her hands creaked as she picked up the limp hand that was twisted at an unnatural angle above the pale face. 

"Look!" The room was suddenly filled with silence as every person within it felt the compulsion to stare. All heads turned at once to watch Lexis lift the victim's chubby palm into better light as if it were some sick sacrificial offering. The purpling fingertips were coated entirely with cobalt blue thirium. A strange image came to the front of Keller's mind when he saw them; the victim's hand (when its owner was still alive) dipping into a bag and retrieving a fistful of Android blood as someone might grab a handful of potato crisps. 

"We've got an android on our hands!" Lexis announced and sounded for all the world like every word she spoke was a curse. If the brief but collective intake of breath that rose from beneath the silence was anything to go by, they might as well have been. Keller watched his partner stand with extra weight upon her shoulders and suddenly said;

"Listen, forensics will be here any minute and they'll want us gone. We can take care of the paperwork in the morning. Besides - we can't do it all unless we've got the coroner's report." 

Lexis glanced at him with eyes the colour of the flames the dying embers behind her once held, supplied him a tired smile - not really a smile, a curve of the lips was all that she seemed to manage most days - and rested her weight on one hip. 

"I'd say 'no', but I'm guessing you don't really wanna do this either." 

"I'd be lying if I denied it." 

He'd also be lying if he denied that his partner's reluctance was the only thing which had spurred him to delay the case. Something had left Lexis's mouth along with her words, and suddenly people's backs were hunched. Their eyes shifted back and forth. Their grips on their equipment was a little tighter. Keller knew why too; when people murder, it's an error of human nature. A crime of passion. A heated moment or a psychological anomaly.  
When an android did it?  
Was it a sign of things to come? Was this one just faulty, or are the machines turning?  
The questions rested on everyone's lips so heavily that Keller could almost see them as he and Lexis passed their somber faces, immobile and plastic in the darkness like a hoard of masks with no bodies except for the hands that worked silently and robotically.  
Keller fished for his car keys in his back pocket - he had parked it a little way down the street to give the forensics vehicles room - and glanced over at his partner as she easily matched his pace beside him. 

"Need a lift?"

"No thanks, Joe. The station's nearby." 

Keller nodded, paused, then did something that only he was allowed to do. The reason that only he was allowed to do this was that he was her friend; Lexis didn't have many of those. He lay his hand lightly on her shoulder and gave it a couple of little pats. 

"Take care of yourself." 

"You too."

When Keller got into the driver's seat of his car - yes, he was fully aware that automated cars existed, but he just couldn't quite bring himself to trust them. Besides, he enjoyed the sensation of the car responding to his gestures and humming beneath him - he watched his partner's figure receding down the dark street. 

A heavy sensation settled in the pit of his stomach and climbed up and over his chest. Keller watched and watched until there was nothing to see anymore but the fog of night and the flickering street lamps that illuminated the pavement in spots. All the while his fingers drummed out snatches of songs on the curve of the steering wheel. 

For some reason that escaped rational thought, Joe Keller knew in the marrow of his bones that he would never see Lexis Montgomery again.

****

The ticking of an analogue clock was a strange sound. 

Lexis remembered how it used to be so common. Carried on the wrist of every person who had a place to be. Mounted on the wall of every room where those people existed. Even though it was no longer so, something about the sound that they made still melted so perfectly with other sounds that it became obsolete. Unnoticeable. 

Until there were no other sounds. Until there was only silence. Silence in the room - silence in your mind. Then the rhythm of it invaded everything until it reached a crescendo. It swung and echoed and taunted your stillness with a tick, tock, tick, tock. 

Lexis was still. 

Tick, tock. 

The reflected eyes were unfamiliar.

Tick, tock. 

Since when had they looked so-...? 

Tick- 

Lexis didn't feel her arm move or return to its former position; only registered the sharp crack as the tiny clock struck the tiled wall. Then a pretty, musical sound like solid rain as broken glass trickled into the bathtub. For a moment the clock itself remained in the tiles before peeling back and clattering around amongst porcelain and shards of its own glass face. Eventually it slid to a halt, staring up ruefully at the circular dent in the tiles left by its own impression, the broken minute hand resembling a thin-lipped frown.  
Lexis almost felt bad, but not quite, because the tug of 'maybe I shouldn't have' wasn't quite as strong as the relief of finally having silence to enjoy. Or at least quiet. Detroit was never - and had never been - completely silent. 

For example; right now, Lexis could hear the marriage on the rocks downstairs just as easily as the newlyweds down the hall. Different kinds of screaming, she mused, but they sounded startlingly similar. Perhaps it was because soon the former would be gone, replaced by the latter, and the latter would be replaced by new tenants and begin the cycle anew. There was also the swoop of the train. The roar of traffic. The beep-and-reverse of a garbage truck.  
It was that one that she most wished would stop. On today, of all days, it seemed almost insensitive. Logically it was simply the noise of people going about their daily lives but god she wanted it to stop. 

A telephone ringing in the hallway pulled her back to reality. Finally she saw herself, leaning so heavily on the sink that her chest hovered over the basin and her hips pressed against the insides of her wrists. She leaned back. The sink let out a tired creak.  
Lexis frowned down at the backs of her hands before allowing her gaze to drift towards the bathtub. She quickly hissed out 'shit', paused as her gaze flicked from the tub to the bathroom door, then turned on her heel.  
She bumped the door open with her shoulder and crossed the empty hallway with two strides. Simultaneously, Lexis scooped the phone out of its mounted charger and turned to lean her back against the wall beside it. 

"Detective...Montgomery?" A gruff tongue drunkenly tripping over around half of her surname. Lexis shut her eyes and pushed her hand onto her hip. 

"Speaking." 

"Get the fuck down here you little shit, we've got a case." 

"Hank-"

"I know, I know. It's not a good time. But if we don't show, then Fowler's gonna have our asses." 

Lexis removed her hand from her hip and threaded it into her corkscrew curls instead. Hank was right - this wasn't a good time, not at all. But...  
The room suddenly felt too hot. Knowing that no one could see, she undid a button on her blouse. 

"Of all the days that you're the one dragging me into the precinct-" 

"Fowler's the problem here, not me. Ain't my fault he wouldn't give you any more leave." 

Something inside of her knew that the situation was unfair. That Fowler should be more sympathetic. But in truth Lexis had barely understood it herself - still didn't- so how could she argue? What had she to argue with? The numbness? The impossible but unmistakable sensation that some creature had attacked the inside of her chest with its claws? The wasting days never knowing what to do?  
These things were both natural and unnatural. They came to her in floods and waves at first, and now in droplets like rain in a lake. Sending ripples across the surface of something far deeper than itself.  
Something that Lexis wasn't programmed to understand. 

"Alright. I'll come in. Just don't drink too much before I get there - I don't wanna have to babysit you." 

"Screw you!" 

"Awesome. Bye, Hank." 

The phone line beeped twice and went dead. Lexis huffed and placed the phone back on the wall without so much as a glance over her shoulder. The bare apartment echoed with each footstep that she took across the polished floor. Although Lexis had lived here for three years - moved in two years after the accident - and despite her best efforts, it had remained devoid of any evidence that anyone had lived in it. It was entirely possible that if someone entered the apartment under the illusion that there never had been any tenants in it, they would find nothing to contradict that. No rumpled bedsheets from no sleep, no leftovers in the fridge from no eating, and no smiling pictures from no loved ones. 

Joe had been a loved one - a friend. Lexis's first, perhaps, since she had escaped. But the universe was cruel that way; it had made sure that the roads had been flooded with just enough water, the waste disposal truck turned at just the wrong time. But of course Joe had to be stubborn that no, he liked driving on his own. He was a good driver. It was safer this way.  
There it was again - the choking sensation like a noose wrapped around her throat from the inside. The stinging behind her eyes. 

Lexis dropped her head to her chest and leaned as she had in the bathroom earlier. Leaned because even though it was impossible for her legs to buckle beneath her, she didn't trust them.  
Leaned as her mind cast itself back into dark recesses that crawled with shadows and teeth with a perverse longing for icy Nothing instead of this. 

For anything but this.

The bar that Lexis found Hank inside was one of those old bars that still stank of tobacco smoke that had been exhaled through parted lips long ago, back when you were allowed to do such a thing in bars. It was this, spilled beer and sweat. The heady mix was acrid but not entirely unpleasant - it carried memories along with it. A sunny afternoon in New Orleans in the early twenty-tens sprang to mind. Perhaps the sun had shone particularly bright on that day or perhaps she was remembering it incorrectly, but there was a distinct golden sheen over that picture in her mind.  
Those two things reminded her of New Orleans. The scent of alcohol mixed with sweat and carried by ancient smoke that could never be quite scrubbed away, and gold. Gold droplets of sunlight shining through golden beer and reflecting off of the golden plaque on the wall. The latter more than the former evoked that memory, 'bar smell' slowly being claimed by the image of Hank as he was now.  
Slumped over a sticky bar-top, perched on a torn leather stool beneath a dim light. Unmoving. Hunched shoulders and stringy grey hair obscuring his face, undoubtedly set into an (ironically) sober expression. Hooded eyelids dropping over bleary eyes that could only stare into the liquor clutched in his fingers.  
Lexis stepped through the doorframe and approached Hank slowly. Best not to startle him, she had learned, if found in a bar.  
Lexis blinked and corrected herself.  
When found in a bar.  
Hank shifted ever so slightly - a minute tilt of the head, but enough that she knew that he'd registered her presence. Lexis quickened her pace and slid onto the barstool to his left. 

"Figured you'd be here. Happy hour on Tuesdays?" 

Hank grunted, lifted the glass to his lips, gulped, slammed it back on the bar. No coaster, Lexis noted. For what reason she made a note of this behaviour she didn't know; it was a habit that remained, so far, unshaken despite her best intentions. 

"What's the case?" 

"Some fuckin' homicide downtown. Another plastic prick went postal." 

Lexis watched her thumb twitch on the bartop when Hank spat out the word 'plastic' like it was a mouthful of dirt. It did the same thing when she saw signs declaring 'No Androids' right next to the ones that said dogs were also banned from the premises. An involuntary reaction because she couldn't quite do nothing - it was better than releasing everything. That twitching thumb wanted the other fingers to join it and curl into a fist, rip those signs from the doors and walls.  
There was just too much, and it always spilled out somehow. A twitching thumb, a curling toe, a flared nostril.  
What truly frightened her was the knowledge in the edges of her conscience. It flitted and darted and if she focused hard enough on what was in front of her then she could pretend that it was a trick of the light. Lexis could pretend that she could keep what swirled around inside of her at bay by expressing it in little drips and trickles.  
But to pretend you must always know the truth.

"Hel-lo?" 

Lexis quickly realised that she had been staring at the bottle of gin on the bar shelf. Still full, because no one who drank in this place came to drink gin. She glanced to her right but averted her eyes just as quickly when they were met with Hank's bleary glare. 

"Sorry. I've been zoning out all day."

"S'understandable." There was an audible gulp as the Lieutenant knocked back the rest of his drink. Lexis briefly pondered asking just how much he had drunk, but since she reckoned that the most comprehensive answer that she would receive would be something along the lines of 'Why the fuck do you care?', she left it be.

"We should probably get down there if Fowler's as het-up as you say." 

"Yup. We probably should." 

Hank slapped his hand onto his car keys and dragged them over the bar top. Lexis bit her lip and stood at the exact same time as he did - easier to sling an arm around him when the old man's knees inevitably wobbled and sent him careening to one side or the other. 

"Perhaps," Lexis spoke in a light tone as she plucked the car keys from his unsuspecting fingers, "I'll drive?"

"Ohyeahsure" Hank's words slurred together into one and he offered her his empty hand. Lexis smiled to herself slightly and shook her head as she pulled him through the bar, hauling his arm across her back and tugging him along by it. 

"You take care of him, Lex. He's had a few tonight." The bartender, Jimmy, called out as he stuffed a washcloth inside of a beer glass. Lexis's stomach sank. 'A few' usually meant more than his usual rate of consumption. When his usual rate of consumption routinely left him collapsed on the floor of his living room, she began to doubt just how much assistance she would receive on this occasion.  
Hank finally realised that his keys were already gone, and he let out an accusatory 'Hey...'

"C'mon, Lieutenant." Lexis drawled and re-adjusted his arm on her shoulders. They loped out of the bar - one figure standing up straight and strong and another leaning at almost forty-five degrees with an arm swinging uselessly beneath his torso. This time the smell of the bar came with them, carried on the strings of grey hair that were plastered across Hank's face and on the heavy, stained jacket that rested on his shoulders. Lexis tilted her head away from his face with a grimace. 

"God, Hank. Your breath could strip paint." 

A mumble that definitely had 'fuck' in it. 

"Yeah. Right back at'cha." 

The night had become colder - dropped by four degrees, eight with wind chill factor - but neither of them were bothered by the difference, although for wildly different reasons. The sky was starless and cloudy. Lexis gauged the air pressure. 

"Looks like it's gonna rain a little." 

Hank didn't reply. His head hung low and small, gravelly sounds passed through his lips; like an overgrown baby attempting to re-learn how to speak. Lexis twisted her body at an awkward angle and, with her free hand, flung the back door open and allowed Hank's bulky frame to collapse into the car back-first. 

"If you throw up, I'm not cleaning it." Lexis shut the door with that promise, knowing full well that she wouldn't keep it. 

Then she was alone beneath the street lamp and staring down at the car keys in her hand. On the key ring there was a little plastic Saint Bernard. Lexis had only met his real dog, Sumo, once. A cold droplet of rain landed on her exposed forearm. She raised her eyes to the car with her brow and lips turned down in a slight frown.  
Driving a manual car in the rain.   
Five years. Five years, Lexis had avoided driving as much as possible. And now that it was an occasion where it was an unavoidable responsibility, on today of all days, it had begun to rain.  
Lexis lifted her eyes to the moonless sky and glared at it. Just for making the sting in the back of her throat, the heaviness in her chest, feel insulting. Put all of her contempt behind it as if her stare alone could pierce the heavens themselves and let Fate know the anger burning in the pit of her stomach. 

Another droplet landed in her eye.

"Where's Hank?" 

"Passed out in the car."

Lexis stepped through the police tape hologram, her hips breaking the line and sending a ripple of stuttering pixels through the yellow light. The stout officer - she thought his name was Samuels - scoffed and swiped rain off of his ruddy cheek with the back of his sleeve. 

"And I'm guessin' that Fowler doesn't need to know about it?" 

Lexis fixed him with a low look. 

"No, he doesn't." 

Samuels (or was it Simmons?) hid his gaze beneath his cap and huffed through wet lips. He parted them as if to protest, moved them silently for a moment, and then sealed them again. Lexis held her stare on him for a few moments longer. The officer stayed completely silent. 

"What's the situation?" She finally broke the silence as she began strolling towards the small and run-down house. The rain lashed against her and tumbled off of her skin like thousands of crystalline beads. It didn't bother her at all, but she made a show of tugging her coat closer to her body. The warmth was pleasant, anyway. Samuels held his cap down low over his face as he trotted alongside her and tried to match her purposeful stride. 

"The vic's name was Carlos Ortiz. Stabbed in the chest and abdomen twenty eight times. Looks like he's been left to rot for a few weeks."  
With a burst of energy, Samuels rushed in front of Lexis and carefully put a hand up in front of her. Her eyes snapped away from the open doorway and met his as she stumbled to a stop. Lexis silently hoped that he didn't take much notice of how she contorted her body, craning and twisting backwards, to avoid making contact with his hand. 

"I'm just lettin' you know so you don't get weirded out - there's an android on the case. Weird new prototype. Some kinda 'detective assistant' or whatever, and he calls himself 'Connor'." Samuels said in a warning tone, and Lexis couldn't quite understand why he thought it might bother her. A detective android was certainly new. Prototypes and new models, however, appeared every other Tuesday; it wasn't much cause for alarm. 

"Thanks for the heads-up." Lexis replied hesitantly and threw in a short smile for good measure. Samuels gave her a strange look as he stepped aside to allow her to enter the house. As soon as Lexis stepped over the threshold, the foul stench of putrid flesh hit her full-force. She choked quietly and shielded herself with the back of her hand. 

"I told you he was ripe." 

Lexis stared fixedly into the the dark room and tried to ignore the sickly-sweet, meaty odour that perforated every inch of it. The glowing blue marker lights radiated cool light against the floorboards and lit the shoes of silhouetted figures as they flitted about in the darkness. The rain drummed on the roof, floorboards creaked periodically. 

'Christ, Joe. It's almost like you're here.' Lexis thought - not quite to herself, but to some spectre. A figment of her imagination made up by her own memories. It visited her less often nowadays, but in the year directly after the accident it became nearly tangible - dancing on the edge of her conscience like a whisper over her shoulder or a silent form next to her elbow. It followed her now with an absent smile as she walked into the centre of the dark room.  
Lexis swivelled her head around as the frown on her brow deepened. Samuels had explicitly said that there was an android already at the scene, but so far all she could see was black, more black, and flickering spots of light that cast what portion of the room was visible into a sickly and spectral light. 

"I was informed-" 

Her hips snapped around. Her knuckles struck something smooth. Lexis saw an ironed tie, then a pale throat, then a pair of dark eyes as her gaze travelled upwards.. The triangle on the breast of his jacket glowed bright against the blackness. 

"I apologise. I didn't mean to startle you." 

The android spoke cautiously as he loosened his palm around her fist. It hung in the air, perfectly aligned with the flickering LED on his temple, for a beat. 

"I assure you that I am not a threat." He insisted. Lexis flicked off his light grip and replaced her arm at her side as she took a step back. The sound echoed through the room - she didn't need to look to know how many pairs of eyes were staring at her. They burned holes into her head as - Samuels had said his name was Connor - stood up straight and impassive. 

"Sorry 'bout that." She shrugged and averted her gaze to the floor, more for the benefit of the listening ears than herself. However - even as she threw on an air of nonchalance, her mind began to spin out of control beneath her fingers. The steering wheel of a runaway car flashed behind her eyes. 

She hadn't realised. She had barely even felt it. 

That hadn't happened since-

White, endless. Blank walls, Blank faces.  
Doctor. Doctor...

"My name is Connor." The android continued as if uninterrupted, speaking with a perfect neutral expression. Lexis jolted. "I am the android sent by CyberLife to aid with the investigation." 

"Good-" Her voice sounded strained. She paused. Started again. "That's good. We need all the help we can get." 

Lexis forced what she hoped was a smile and scanned her gaze along the length of Connor's body. Focus. Focus on anything else. Every detail; whatever it took. Anything to keep the memory scent of disinfectant and metal from creeping up the back of her throat.  
She noticed the android cocking his head to the side as he returned the gesture and observed her - a charmingly human quirk made less charming when you remembered that it was programmed to be so. Perhaps it could be seen as ironic that there was something about CyberLife androids set her teeth on edge, but Lexis didn't think of it that way. Not when they were so perfect. So unquestioning. Even beneath the thick blanket of darkness there was no denying Connor's perfect aesthetic design. Prosaically handsome, tall, smartly styled brown hair - immaculately unremarkable and unthreatening. 

Lexis knew CyberLife's tricks, of course, and she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't at least a little smug about it. 

"I was assigned to Lieutenant Anderson...?" Connor trailed off with a frown and swept his gaze around the room before returning it back to her face. It never seemed to leave her for more than a moment. There was something in the back of his eyes - something deeper than the brown irises that made the skin on the back of her neck cold. Lexis shifted her weight as she answered. 

"He's in the car." 

"Will he be joining us?" 

Lexis snorted. The android's brow cast his narrowed eyes into shadow. 

"Not unless you have a cold shower." 

Connor's mouth parted slightly and exposed a sliver of the white of his teeth. Before he could say anything, however, she waved him off. 

"Forget it. You'll meet him tomorrow." 

Connor bobbed his head briskly and strode past her without another word, finally turning his laser-focus stare away as he receded from the light until he became just a glowing triangle. Lexis glanced over her shoulder and shared a look with Samuels, who had been watching from the doorframe - a look that seemed to say;  
'Well, isn't this just perfect.'


End file.
